[Dragaera] The Enclouding

[Michael Wojcik]

Alexx Kay wrote:
> 
> OTOH, that passage has other interesting features; it implies strongly
> that while Castle Black is (at that time) hidden from view from below by
> the overcast, people inside CB could still see the ground.  Is there some
> sort of polarization?

There needn't be. The obscuring effect of a translucent layer is more
pronounced the further the observer is from the layer, and it's more
pronounced for viewers in the region with greater ambient light. If
you stand in the edge of a fogbank, you can often see out perfectly
clearly, while remaining more or less obscured to outside viewers.

In a similar vein, consider someone wearing a fencing mask - they can
see out quite clearly, but it's hard to see his or her face. That's
partly because the layer diffracts both incident and reflected light,
so the light the fencer sees by is diffracted once, but the light the
audience sees reflected from the fencer's face is diffracted twice.
But it's also because the fencer is much closer to the diffraction
grating, so whatever the angle of diffraction, the rays reaching the
fencer's eyes have diverged much less than those reaching the eyes of
the audience.


-- 
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus
Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University